Stereotyping part fifty million.

Another big problem I have with the autistic civil rights movement in its current incarnation is that one group seems to believe its view of itself should be applied to all groups. A good example of this in recent months is a publication called Loud Hands. You see, there is a stereotype, based largely on diagnostic criteria and psychologist writing, that has it that autistic individuals rock about like badly-made chairs or wave their hands about like a six year old who has watched too many rap star videos.

And of course, once the politically-correct, passive, pacifist arm of the autistic “community” decides something is so, everyone has to follow it or be ostracised and told they do not count. Well, sorry, asswipes, but here is the thing. Just as not every black man lives off fried chicken and says “we be fukked” when things go badly for he and his peers, not every autistic individual wiggles their hands about like they are convulsing. In fact, that is a good place to start looking for the reason why.

As I mention with some frequency, I have diabetes. Unlike my autism, I would give anything, including both testicles, to be rid of it. And one of the reasons for that is that during one point in my life, I could not even move a muscle without an asshole like my male parent declaring to me that I was “hypo”, and trying to force things like orange juice into my mouth. Notwithstanding the fact that such behaviour makes me feel severely assaulted at the best of times, feeling like your every micro-movement is being monitored for the slightest deviance from the tolerated norm is a horrible way to live and one I would not tolerate being inflicted upon any of my sister’s children. (Consider that a warning, “daddy”.)

So no, passives, autistic individuals do not necessarily throw their hands about like a conductor on amphetamines. Hell, my favourite among past girlfriends (who almost but not quite meets the criteria to be autistic) is Italian, and although the syllable “ah” is a frequent word-ender for her, the use of hand sweeps to punctuate statements is not. Whether her failure to meet this stereotype is simply inherent to her or the result of psychological abuse like that which I have just described for myself, I do not know. Given what I know of her parental units, either possibility deserves consideration.

In order to understand why stereotypes are hurtful, it is important to go into a few cultural examples of where they have been bent to make a good point. There is what the late Steve Kangas once referred to as the “Archie Bunker effect”, where the loud and ignorant yelling of racist, bigoted statements makes fence-sitters look at the racist idiot and think, well, if that is the KKK’s side of it, I do not want a bar of it. (Yes, I am being overly simplistic with that, bear with me.) One of the best jokes in Blazing Saddles comes when the ignorant white cowboy employees of the rail company are tricked into singing one of the songs they are surprised to not hear the black slaves singing (by the black slaves, no less). This joke is a great one not only because it is hysterically funny, but also because it taps into a fundamental truth about people that many would do well to learn. Specifically, that how people from outside of a group see people within the group, how people within a group see themselves, and the reality of being a person within the group, are often very, very different things.

The problem with being autistic in terms of how one sees oneself is that there are no autistic role models, no autistic art, and no autistic media outlets. Everything that the autistic individual gets in terms of culture comes from outside sources. And except in some accidental cases that I have previously identified (the real X-Men films, for example), none of the conceptions of the autistic that come from outside sources come within a universe of the real thing.

Which makes it extremely irritating to say the least when publications by groups claiming to be autistic self-advocacy groups play into the stereotypes thrust upon us by normies. You know what other kind of group is stereotyped as flailing their hands (or arms) wildly whilst making stupid noises and generally acting like an asshole, passives? Take a look at this exhibition of Maddox ripping Tomek Andraka a new asshole and see if you can work it out, passives. (Hint: people used to do the spastic face and arm waggling thing when I was in lower-level school. It was not clever then, and it looks even worse when performed by individuals who are big enough to be mistaken for adults.)

In order to understand why stereotypes are (almost) universally bad, it is a good idea to look into the rare occasions when they are good. I have a diminished sense of how to interpret the difference between an archetype and a stereotype, so I will frame this point thusly. An archetype can be considered as a lesser or less malicious version of the stereotype. Every time you see a comedy film in which a character exists mainly to tell jokes and act in a manner that could be considered stereotypical, but is portayed in a manner more sympathetic than derisive, that is an archetype. Animal House and Stripes are two examples of comedy films that are populated by archetypes. Police Academy tried to do this, but failed under the weight of poor writing.

In Animal House and Stripes, the characters seem stereotypical to the untrained eye. The drill sergeant is a lunatic who prides himself on being tough enough to deal with all of the recruits at his command even if they all attack him at once. The primary hero of the film is a slacker who barely grooms himself and chases women around like I chase Paul Verhoeven films. The secondary hero of the film is a long-suffering friend who is more intellectual and likes to go along with the primary just to see what will happen. There is a hick who is apparently unaware that the draft has not been in use for years. There is a fat man who figures he can earn some money and lose weight at the same time.  All of these characters, whilst about as deep as a puddle of urine, are portrayed with a certain goofy reverence by actor and script alike.

This is a contrast to Disability Of The Week™ films like Rain Man, where the character that is the subject of the film is a stereotype. He is portrayed as a burden to people who are specialised in caring for him and what little family he has alike. Even when the film abruptly shifts gears and tries to portray one character as having a newfound respect for his Humanity, it is not because of the character’s actual Humanity (which is disregarded almost entirely, anyway). It is because of what this character is portrayed as being able to help the protagonist do (essentially, gamble his way out of rather than into debt).

Probably the key difference between stereotypes and archetypes is the position from which the story is told. In the case of a stereotype, the character is always seen from someone else’s perspective. Never are you given a true look into what goes on in the mind of the stereotypical character. On occasion, writers and directors will attempt to make it look as if you are getting a look at what is going on in their mind, but you are not. What you are getting is a look at what the normie outsider thinks would be going on in their mind, which is a very different thing.

The real X-Men films (that is, X-Men, X2, and X-Men: First Class) are not archetype films in the true sense. I will, however, use them to illustrate a point about the difference. They do not just show you the thoughts, feelings, and ideas of the characters. They even attempt to make you grok them. Every one of them contains at least one line in which the words I want to say come out of the mouths of one of the characters. Usually, it is either Mystique or Magneto, but the salient point here is that even though the characters are far deeper than an archetype, they share one thing in common with the archetypical characters of Animal House or Stripes. They depend on the audience sympathising with them in order to really work. This is clear when Pinto (Tom Hulce) is struggling with his desire to get to really know a girl he meets at a supermarket and later reveals to him that she is only fourteen years old. Most males of Pinto’s age have struggled with having tender feelings towards a woman they know next to nothing about, and endlessly debated with themselves about whether to do what will make them happy in the short term, or do the right thing.

In the end, the problem I am trying to point out has several prongs to it. Just as the curebies depend on a falsified view of autism in order to exploit us and pursue their goal of autistic genocide, our efforts to rob them of that ability must focus on getting the truth out to fence-sitters. And that means literally shoving it into them if need be. Shirts that say “I love someone with autism” (hint: if you separate them from the most vital component of what they are, you do not love them… would you say “I love someone with blackness”? think about it) must be countered with shirts that say “I am autistic… what is your excuse, normie?”, and so forth.

I do not understand why I keep having to say this. Every lie, no matter how big or small, has to be countered with truth. And I will say this much to the passives: if you think that by “lie” I just mean the defamatory statements made in advertisements or at Congressional hearings, you are mistaken. When a film is put out that makes us out to be universally comprised of cute little fairies who can be fukked over at will, we need to make another Blade Runner. When it is said that those of us who work all do so in the IT industry and resemble a Married… With Children stereotype, we must show them photographs of people like the autistic soldier I have spoken with who has shrapnel embedded in his face. Every time it is proclaimed that autistic people are just waiting to go into schools and shoot children, we must point out all of the times autistic children, adolescents, and adults have been murdered, tortured, and generally messed with on the sole basis of being autistic. And in order to make this effective, we must follow a policy of drowning them out. We must follow the Israeli policy promised when its neighbours threatened to nuke them in response to America’s “police action” in Kuwait. We must make it clear to the normies that every time they lie about us in front of our faces, we will retaliate tenfold. Because this is a fight we cannot afford to not finish.

I will close with one remark to supplement that last statement. I will make a confession here. I am actually pretty sad that Patrick Swayze died without ever getting a second chance to prove he could be in a big-dollar film based on more than just his looks. At the time I saw this interview, I just thought he was another big Hollywood dickhead. But he explained something about his approach to life that I wish I understood the wisdom of a lot earlier. Describing his upbringing, he told the interviewer that his father told him “if you start a fight, I will kick your ass”. He immediately followed this by saying that his father also told him “if you get in a fight and do not finish it, I will kick your ass”. Autistic individuals of the world, we did not start this fight. But if we do not finish it, nature, Odin, or whatever abstraction you prefer, is going to kick our ass.